Terminator Moon: A Moonscape of ShadowsWhat’s different about this Moon? It’s the terminators. In the featured image, you can’t directly see any terminator — the line that divides the light of day from the dark of night. That’s because the featured image is a digital composite of many near-terminator lunar strips over a full Moon. Terminator…Read More

Galaxy Lenses Galaxy from WebbIs this one galaxy or two? Although it looks like one, the answer is two. One path to this happening is when a small galaxy collides with a larger galaxy and ends up in the center. But in the featured image, something more rare is going on. Here, the central light-colored elliptical galaxy is much closer than the blue…Read More

The Orion Nebula in Visible and InfraredThe Great Nebula in Orion is a colorful place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. Long exposure, multi-wavelength images like this, however, show the Orion Nebula to be a busy neighborhood of young stars, hot gas, and dark dust. This digital…Read More

Painting with JupiterIn digital brush strokes, Jupiter’s signature atmospheric bands and vortices were used to form this interplanetary post-impressionist work of art. The creative image from citizen scientist Rick Lundh uses data from the Juno spacecraft’s JunoCam. To paint on the digital canvas, a JunoCam image with contrasting light and dark…Read More

Comet C/2025 F2 SWANIn late March, the comet now designated C/2025 F2 SWAN was found independently by citizen scientists Vladimir Bezugly, Michael Mattiazzo, and Rob Matson while examining publicly available image data from the Solar Wind ANisotropies (SWAN) camera on the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft. Comet SWAN’s coma, its greenish color a…Read More